Comments by 4nature

I received so many concerned emails from friends and people who love the reserve. Chancellor Yang and his wife Dilling were at the reserve monitoring the situation until 1:30 AM. The firefighters and inmate crews did some great work containing the fire so quickly. Thank you all for your support.

In the next 2 years we will be doing a lot of restoration on the burned sites. Join us for a workday or help us build a restoration fund to bring the reserve back to its splendor. This is a wonderful community to live in.

Momohonu focus on the transformation of Jake. The transformation was deep and complex. 4Nature was thinking of the 2 scenes where Neytiri teaches Jake about hunting and killing ethics. Neytiri shows Jake that killing from stupidity is wrong and that when hunting for food, one must thank nature and the spirit of the dead. Aldo Leopoldo was also a hunter and one day he looked at a wolf in the eye and was transformed. He saw. We destroy nature and overuse it because we don't have food ethics anymore. We don't say thank you to the creatures we eat. We disconnected ourselves from the basic resources that keep us alive. I advocate bringing back a food ethic, as in Avatar. In this ethic we don't waste, we understand where the food came from, we accept that others died to feed us (even if we choose to be a vegetarian), we accept that food is limited and must be harvest with care and scientific knowledge, we control our population, we eat local and organic and we hug our farmer.

MVM, please stay! what is nature or science without poetry? You have the rare talent of being simultaneously a scientist and a sentimentalist. Your feelings of love for nature is what moves you to protect it. It is in your words. I feel sorry for those who forbid themselves of this delightful passion. As Aldo Leopoldo and the people from Avatar knew, a resource can be eaten and loved at the same time. My dear ocean, you feed me and provide me with joy. Your untamed nature and mysteries teaches me respect. I must eat your food now but I promise to protect you and understand your delicate balance. We shall both live forever.

Hi East Beach, Shehe, the hermaphrodite, acts as a boy with the girls. She knows when the other girls are ready to mate, and I know it too because I watch Shehe courting them. She is my "watch goat". Shehe has both male and female organs and produces male hormones. This is how she developed a mane and a masculine face and body. Hermaphroditism is rare but it happens in goats once in a while. Shehe has a sister and a brother that are normal.

Thank you for all your comments. This has been an interesting conversation. I would like to continue it to explore my own understanding of why I am so against this raid. It feels unjust, extreme, and disrespectful. The chicken we buy in the supermarket comes from much worst conditions. Check the PETA videos on this subject. That is really gruesome. Yet, Animal Services does not seize their animals. Why? Because it would be illegal. I believe it is a violation of civil rights for an agency to seize your farm animals based on subjective allegations of inadequate husbandry. What was the unbiased criteria and standards of chicken husbandry to make this decision? Animal Services and neighbors do not have the right to make this decision because the opinion that the animals were mistreated is based on personal judgment and not on clear legal standards. If there were such standards, they would need to be applied to large chicken farms, for fairness. Our legal system is the only tool we have to keep arbitrary injustice from proliferating. I don't like the precedent.created by this case. I hope her lawyer can put a stop in this case and reveal the ugliness that lead to it.

It is important that everyone understands that the standard for good husbandry for farm animals is not the same as the ones for humans or indoor pets. Farm animals live outside, we live inside of our sterile homes. Any farmer can tell you that their animals will have rodent drops in their water and food every day. This isn't cruelty and it isn't a sign of the owner's neglect. It is just reality and cannot be avoided. In fact, rodent droppings are legally allowed in our food. The "Food Defect Action Level". It's actually unavoidable and not harmful. The average person consumes about 2 pounds of rodent droppings and other yucky things per year. To have access to fresh local food, we city folks need to understand the realities of farm living and be kind to farmers. They feed us. We would starve without them. Yet, family farmers are forced out of their land at an alarming rate. According to Farm Aid, every week 330 farmers leave their land. Things like seizing the farmer's animals can be a financial destruction for a farmer living on a shoe string. I can understand someone from the city may not know these facts. I cannot understand or accept a staff from Animal Services to do the same. It is even more frustrating to see the hypocrisy in the agency's actions. The same Animal Services that thought that the chickens need better care, will trap and kill wild animals everyday. Including very important large carnivores such as bobcats and mountain lions. This agency needs an independent investigation and review of their actions. But for now, they need to return the chickens to Ms. Cougal.About the lady living in a trailer with junk around. What is happening to us that we can't stand looking at people of worse luck? Please everyone, be kind, tolerate, have compassion. I can see that there is personal vendetta about this lady's life style. Sure, we can make her life miserable, rob her of her income, and make her loose $4,000, then she can become a homeless, but then we would ask to police to remove the homeless from our streets. In the mean time the chickens will die on other people's backyards, the animal services will be $4,000 richer from adoption fees, and we will have a town clean of poverty and dirt. Does that really make you happier?

Guys, this isn't about eating meat or not. This is about having an overzealous animal services who would go into your house, take your dog away and give it to someone else, at their discretion. Someone who they don't know who it is, and might as well eat your dog for the Holidays.

It is absurd that this county chooses to raid someone who is caring for animals that no one else wants. It is OK to raise farmed chickens in filthy conditions if you are a large corporation but it is not OK to take care of animals in free conditions if you are a small land owner. This isn't the message that the people from Santa Barbara want to give! WATCH FARMAGEDDON. This is not a single case.This is a widespread war against small farmers. The key issue in all these cases is the lack of respect for the animal owner. How many hours and dollars Ms. Coupal has already spent to take care of chickens others would rather let die? Why not choose the respectful approach and help Ms.Coupal and thank her for her work instead of treating her like a criminal. Criminals get more rights than small farmers do. Animal services talks about Ms. Coupal improper conditions. Did they mention how they transported the chickens by trowing a large turkey on top of them? Did they mention that they did not let Ms. Coupal check the health of her chickens or bring a vet to see her animals? Did they mention that the shelter is not capable of having 300 chickens? By taking the chickens away, Animal Services was guilty of the same fault they blamed Ms. Coupal . They claime to be sending the chickens to better homes, which they have no idea if they actually are. They also contributed to the widespread feeling of fear and disrespect to small farmers, when they should be helping them. Most of all, they did not help the chickens. In this age, when we are realizing that sustainable small farming is the way to achieve food freedom and health, we should have our county agencies supporting the local food movement. Ms. Coupal was contributing to this by raising chickens that can lay fresh eggs, local, free range. These chickens should go back to Ms. Coupal. The county may even consider helping Ms. Coupal is hard financial times because Ms. Coupal is taking care of animals others don't want. Supervisors, please take a stand on this. Watch Farmageddon, become informed, help small farmers, help Ms. Coupal. Treat people with dignity the same way that Ms. Cougal treated the rejected chickens.I don't know Ms. Cougal, but I would not like to be treated the same way.

The comment that oil and gas are natural here is misleading. What Venoco did not tell you is that the barging operation releases crude vapors that contain cancer causing agents such as benzene. There has been 2 cases of cancer in the neighborhood next to the coal oil point. Both happened on children, who are more vulnerable to this type of exposure. These are very rare cancers and unlikely to have occurred in the same area by chance. They also did not tell you that odor complaints are 4 times more frequent when the barge is loading than when the barge is not present. The natural gas seeps also produce vapors but they are far enough that the gas is blown offshore. However, the gas from the barge loading operation is right next to the beach and is blown onshore. In fact, the prevailing wind brings the vapors from the barge straight to the point and IV elementary school. The crude vapors that smell like acid butane are only present when the barge is here. These are the worse gases you could inhale. Venoco, APCD, and the State Lands Commission are also not telling you that they have ignored warnings about this public health. For over 15 years they have ignored complaints and asserted that the independent studies were biased, but they have not conducted or published their own studies. APCD now accepts that the barge is releasing dangerous odors and fines Venoco for doing so. But the barge continues to operate and have frequent releases of vapors. How is this action by APCD protecting public health?People living at the point,, IV, and even UCSB have had to evacuate from vapor releases from the barge. Last year, alarms at UCSB detected the odors and went off, causing shut downs of several departments. These vapors are silent killers. You may be thinking you live in a clean environment and having a health activity by taking a walk on the beach and in fact, you might be inhaling vapors that cause cancer, asthma, and a number of other health issues. I am yet to see a statement by our local government that the barge activity they are permitting (and are being supported financially by) is safe. As always, these things only get solved with law suits, after enough innocent people get hurt..